It was such a thoroughfare as Dante might
have imagined in his Hell, if people in his time had minded such
horrors; but as it was we could only realize that it was worse than
infernal, it was medieval, and that we were driving in such putrid
foulness as the gilded carriages of kings and queens and the prancing
steeds and palfreys of knights and ladies found their way through
whenever they went abroad in the picturesque and romantic Middle Ages. I
scarcely remember now how we got away and down to the decent waterside,
and then by the helpful bridge to the other shore of the Guadalquivir,
painted red with the reflections of those consoling tramp steamers.
After that abhorrent home of indolence, which its children never left
except to do a little fortune-telling and mule and donkey trading, eked
out with theft in the country round, any show of honest industry looked
wholesome and kind. I rejoiced almost as much in the machinery as in the
men who were loading the steamers; even the huge casks of olives, which
were working from the salt-water poured into them and frothing at the
bung in great white sponges of spume, might have been examples of toil
by which those noisome vagabonds could well have profited.
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